...Special Lady and FREE Box cut files

Folks I still have a couple of things to show you that I didn't get time to post during the release.

One of them was the complete set of samples for my Special Lady project. I'm a bit of a magpie when it comes to stamping, I like a load of different styles but one thing I keep coming back to is Vintage. I just cannot get enough of those fabulous Victorian style engravings. My mother was a huge vintage/antiques fan and so I think I will forever associate Vintage style with Mother's Day projects. This latest stamp sets, Special Lady was designed with her in mind. Even though she passed away a few years ago, I haven't yet managed to design a Mother themed set without thinking about my wee mum. I think she would have loved this set.

My card is pretty straight forward, I really wanted to show off this beautiful lady image, I created this image by working with a few original victorian engravings, reconstructing the damaged areas and combining a couple of images to get this finished image of a pretty lady in a fancy hat. I paired this with a pretty font which has an old world feel. I simply stamped her in dark brown ink onto a tag I had cut with our stitched tags dies. I added just a little more pink into her hat with a copic marker.

Making Rosettes with a Picot Panel die

Do you like that little rosette? I have never made one of these before now - gasp - I know, I'm a few years behind the times. Turns out that it is super simple to make these and we already have the perfect tool! - the Picot Panel die. Here's how to make one using this die:

Line up your picot panel die face down on your patterned paper, I'm using a piece of 12 inch long designer paper. stick the die to the paper with a little masking tape. Run the paper through the die cutter, but NOT ALL THE WAY - stop short before you reach the end of the die and rewind back to get the paper and die out. 

Resposition the die, further down the paper, towards the end of this first cut - it is really easy to line up the die using the holes, you can see in the image below that I had marked a little arrowhead in pencil, along the right hand side of my paper to tell me where the end of the die was. I cut this in my Cuttle bug as the clear plates allow me to see where I am with the die cut in relation to the rollers.

If you keep going, you will eventually end up with a strip of paper like this. You can either slice this down the centre to get two small rosettes or use it whole for a larger rosette.

In order to make folding the rosette easier, I scored the strip of paper with the back of the blade in my scalpel. I scored in between each of the scallops. I trimmed off a strip about three quarters of an inch wide from one side as I did not want the rosette to be too big. Then I just concertina folded all the way along. I joined the ends together with some double sided tape, and gathered one side of the folded edges together and secured them with some hot glue from a hot glue gun. you can just see the glue in the smaller, unfinished rosette in the top left of the photo below. 

This pic also shows some little embellishments I made with some air drying clay. I just pressed some of the Cameo creations  stamps and the Cameo to go stamps into a piece of clay and let them air dry, then I coloured them pink with copics to match my project.

I used the small three quarter inch strip to make this mini rosette for my box tag.

 I used the other piece of my strip to make the slightly larger rosette for the card.

And I created another strip using the Picot Panel die and used it full size to create an even larger rosette for this box lid. I made a plainer pink stripe rosette also and layered it with the Snowflake 3 die cut - this is a surprisingly versatile die also, it's not too 'snowy-flakey' that you couldn't use it on everyday projects such as this one.

What's nice about the Picot Panel die is that it matches the pretty circles die, which I used on the inside of the card, to stamp my sentiment on.

Picot Panel

Pretty Circles

Do you like these little boxes? I made up a quick template for these and for one of the samples I cut out an aperture on the lid using the pretty circles die.

I love how the pretty circles die gives two results with one cut, like our other self matting dies. A label and an aperture in one cut.

I twas simple just to tape the die in place before running the box lid through the die cutter.

The Box cutting file is available as a .svg file for free in our freebies section at the store - just click here if you would like to have it! It's around 3 inches square, perfect for little gifts of all sorts, - it would also make a great cupcake box!

Sure hope it tickles!